


this feels like falling

by madamemasque



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/M, a little angsty, features sana's dreams of becoming a doctor, if i studied for school as much as i write character studies i'd be a damn genius, sana bakkoush character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 22:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11633361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamemasque/pseuds/madamemasque
Summary: "Flying is like falling up"Later, after all is said and done and the world is right side up again, Sana will realize that they have never once asked each other to stay.





	this feels like falling

Later, after all is said and done and the world is right side up again, Sana will realize that they have never once asked each other to stay.

Not that first time, at Maghreb, when he’d handed her the bowl of soup and the soft brush of his hands against her own had felt warmer than any comfort she’d ever known; not when he’d spoken to her in that quiet voice about all the things she held dear to her heart; not when he’d finally put his arms around her and pressed her into his warm chest and whispered to her “I can feel myself falling in love with you”. She did not ask him to stay.

And he’d come back from Turkey as he’d promised, his skin a little darker and his cheeks a little rounder and it was all she could do to not press her own face to his and feel that same warmth she’d felt months ago. Because he is softer now, and the planes of his hurt do not protrude from his skin as much as they used to. She thanks Even for this–he is no longer skittish among the balloon boys and they in turn no longer treat him like spun spider web glass. Even is human now, and he does not immediately move from his place on the sofa when Yousef comes back. Not with malice, but with the conviction of knowing where he belongs. And Yousef smiles that crooked, perfect smile of his and joins Elias on the floor.

The next time she sees him is at the mosque. She’s surprised. He enters and exits within the span of 15 minutes and it is not without a pang in her heart that she watches him leave with fear evident in his eyes. He does not see her. She does not ask him to stay. He is not hers after all.

But she sees him again at the mosque for a common lecture that her mother had enlisted her help in dragging Elias along as well. This time he’s wearing a white kurta, collar stiff with starch. He looks like he is suffocating. Before she can turn away, he sees her and his features soften. He tells her he feels like he’s suffocating. She tells him she knows. He turns his head and she tries not to dwell on the pale skin there as she reaches up to unclasp the first clip. He looks down at her with a smile again, and as her heart swells with the words she cannot bring herself say—What does this mean? For you? For us?— his father calls his name from across the hall and he bids her goodbye. She still does not ask him to stay. She has no right to.

* * *

The next month, she is poring over the dozens of papers she has spread over the table from colleges all across Europe. A chemistry program here, a biology course there, a biochemistry program that seems much too good to be true. Everything runs together in her mind and she rises to get herself a glass of water, more as an excuse to do something else than actual thirst. Elias, that bastard, has put all the glasses on the highest shelf and Sana is so ingrained in her struggle to stretch that she does not notice Yousef until his hand reaches past hers and brings down a glass. She almost yelps in surprise but he is already moving away to perch on the table.

He notes the papers on the table with an eyebrow quirked. “You have a system?”

From anyone else, it would be a taunt. Still, she draws herself up and raises her chin slightly. “Of course I have a system.”

He smirks, but something draws his eye and he turns back to the table. He places a finger on the brochure about the biochemistry program that she’d been drawn to first. She shivers, remembering Noora’s words.  _Soulmates_. She shakes her head to chase away the thought, but it is Yousef that breaks her out of her reverie.

“I have a friend who went to this program.”

“Really?” Sana had not expected this from him. Sometimes she forgets that he has a life outside her brother’s balloon boys. Silly of her.

“Yes, I can give you her number if you want to talk to her about it. She always says it’s the best decision she’s ever made.” He looks up from the table and there is something unreadable in his eyes.

“That would be great actually. I’ve been thinking about applying to that one, but…” she trails off, biting her lip sullenly.

“But what?” Yousef asks and Sana closes her eyes against the onslaught of reasons flooding her mind:  _Baba would never let me go to Germany, it is too far, I don’t know anybody there, nobody will help me if I am hurt, I don’t even know how to drive, I would miss my family too much, everyone I love here wouldn’t miss me enough, you wouldn’t miss me enough._

But she cannot say these things to him, so in the end she simply says, “I doubt I’m good enough for such a selective program.”

He scoffs, a strangely cynical sound to come from such a light boy. “Don’t say that. Any of these colleges would be lucky to have you.” It is a kind thing for him to say but the strangeness in his eyes has bled into his voice and before she knows it, she is alone in the kitchen with the papers askew on the table.

Later that night, he sends her his friend’s number. When Sana thanks him, he texts back promptly, “Alt for deg, girl” but it reads differently to her now, as if it is something he says simply because he must. She does not dwell on it.

At least, she tries not to.

* * *

The next three months pass in a blur. She has exchanged countless texts and calls with Yousef’s friend, Aisha, who Sana swears is a goddess among women. She decides not to tell her parents about the program unless she is accepted, but even as she sends her applications to other colleges across Norway, she practices her German, sometimes with Aisha, sometimes with Chris. Just in case, she tells herself. It is foolish to dream, but that has never stopped her before.

The letter comes addressed to her and she doesn’t recognize the name at first, the German consonants alien in her mind as she sounds it out. But comprehension comes like a tidal wave. Her heart pounds as she slowly tears open the envelope and carefully slides out the thin slip of paper. “Congratulations, Sana Bakkoush,” it reads and she feels like she is floating.

At dinner, amidst spoonfuls of couscous and green beans, Sana stops abruptly and says, “I got accepted into a biochemistry program in Germany.” She has never been one of subtlety. Rather the band-aid ripped off than coaxed.

She is greeted with shocked silence. Elias is the first to break it.

“Congrats, sis!” he exclaims, grin stretching from ear to ear. He gets up from his seat and rushes over to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple. She wants to beam back up at him, her sweet Elias, who has always planted himself firmly on her side; she remembers middle school when he’d bandaged her scraped knees and looked at her with fire in his eyes and whispered, “Us against the world, sis.” She wants to rejoice with him, run around the kitchen like a small child who has finally gotten what she wants, but she can’t because her parents haven’t yet moved.

Her mother has a soft smile on her face, at least, but her father is staring down at his plate. He clears his throat roughly. “Germany, you said?”

“Yes, Baba.”

He makes a noncommittal noise and Sana looks at him with desperation. “Please, Baba. This program is one of the most selective medical programs in all of Europe. People who graduate from here have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, and they chose me! I want to save lives, Baba, just like you do! And this is the first step that gets me ready to do that!” she stops breathlessly just as her father raises his head. She almost flinches when she realizes that he has tears in his eyes.

He too gets up from the table and comes to her, cupping her face in his weathered palms. “Make me proud, Sana,” he says, and that is all there is.

Then her mother is fussing over her, smoothing back her hair and listing out all the people they know in Germany should she ever need help with a car or a plumber or homemade food. And Sana allows herself to lean back into her mother’s arms and float in the warm, happy circle of her family who loves her.

* * *

Another month passes, a kaleidoscope of a month, filled with tears and laughs and packing and presents. The girls all rush to embrace her with tears in their eyes when she breaks the news to them, and between promises to keep in touch and send them the numbers of every cute German boy she meets, Sana’s heart almost breaks with the overwhelming knowledge that she won’t ever find friends as lovely as the losers she is lucky to call her own. Telling Isak and Even is easier, simply because there aren’t as many tears. “Make sure you remember to thank your best bud when you win your Nobel Prize,” Isak grins, dodging the punch Sana sends his way. Even looks at them both fondly, then announces a brilliant idea to throw one last Kosegruppa party in their flat, as a send off for Sana. She agrees, albeit reluctantly.

The party is just like every other party Sana has ever attended. Loud, permeating with the sickly sweet stench of weed (Noora had insisted on forbidding drugs and alcohol, but Vilde had insisted that no party was complete without it), and couples hooking up in the corner. People come up to talk to her, which is different, but their booze-tinted conversations lack coherence and grammar, so Sana hugs her girls and bids Isak, Even and the rest of the boys goodbye and ducks out early.

She really doesn’t mind. It was more for her friend’s sake than hers anyway.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Yousef’s smiling face greets her on the screen, and she can’t help but grin like an idiot as she picks up. The night air is cool around her and as she breathes, its crisp bite makes her feel…enormous? Strong? Indomitable?

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sana. You busy right now?” He sounds nonchalant, but there’s something almost like worry tinging his voice.

“It’s 8 pm, Yousef. Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but I’m also not 75 like you. You go to sleep at 8?” At least now, he chuckles.

Sana laughs back in response. “No, I’m not busy. Should I meet you at the pier?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

Night has definitely fallen when she reaches the pier, but the late summer sun throws up feeble rays of light that turn the clouds pink and purple near the horizon. Yousef sits on the dock, his long legs dangling below, almost touching the water. His hands are in his pockets and he stares directly at the last of the sunset. He looks peaceful.

“And beautiful,” her mind reminds her. She shakes her head to dismiss the thought and clears her throat to alert him of her presence. He greets her with his sweet grin, toothy and crooked. She greets him with her own small smile, cursing herself for still being so subdued around him.

Now that the sun has set, the chill sets in and as she joins him on the dock, goose bumps erupt across her skin. She shivers when their shoulders touch and tries to ignore the fact that the goose bumps might be more his doing than the cold. He notices her slight shake and shrugs off his jacket, ignoring her refusal and draping it around her shoulders. He smiles at her again and again she notices the strangeness in his eyes. She doesn’t like it. It makes him a different person.

They sit in silence for awhile, the space between them comfortable but heavy. When Yousef finally breaks it, she’s surprised at the way his voice breaks.

“I’ve been going to the mosque more often.”

“I know. I saw you there, remember?” she says, turning to him but his eyes are downcast, staring at the slow waves lapping under their feet. His shoulders are taught and planes of his hurt that had retreated have surfaced again.

“Yousef,” she says, inching closer, “what’s wrong?”

He simply shakes his head and they are once again engulfed in a silence, this one deeper and more alien than the last. She wants so badly to break it—if she were Vilde or Chris she could’ve easily cut through the awkward tension with a joke or a quip about his moodiness. If she were Noora or Eva, she would’ve been blunt and told him, “Cut the crap and tell me what you’re feeling.” She is made of a different sort of material than her friends, though: her words do not come so easily to her when the people she’s aiming them at care for her. But the last few months have been an exercise in bravery for her so she musters up all the courage she has found within herself and takes his hand into her own. Yousef flinches away at first, surprised, but when she doesn’t move away, he relaxes, his own grip softly curled into hers.

They sit like this and Sana lets herself pretend that she is his and he is hers and there’s nothing beyond this moment that means anything to anyone. It’s such a sweet thought that when Yousef clears his throat, she’s a little annoyed at him for diffusing her thoughts.

“I told my grandfather about you in Turkey, you know?” he says, finally turning to her.

She returns his soft smile with her own. “Oh?” She’s only seen pictures of Yousef’s grandfather before, but he had always seemed like a sweet man, a prospect Sana had regarded with much jealousy because her own grandparents were so strict. “What did you say about me?”

“I said you were the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

“You’re being too flattering. You’ve met plenty of smarter people than me,” she says, ducking her head in embarrassment.

Yousef presses two fingers to her chin, gently forcing her to look up at him. “I would never lie to my grandfather.” His eyes are blazing and Sana almost backs away, but then Yousef is moving away and her hand is left colder than it had been. She sticks it into the pocket of her hoodie but the cold lingers still.

She’s tired, she realizes with a pang. This cat and mouse, push and pull game they’ve been playing for months is frustrating on the best of days and makes her want to tear out her hair at the roots on the worst of days. And now she’s leaving for Germany in a day and they both still can’t muster up the words they both want to say to each other. She would be furious at him if it weren’t for the rage boiling within herself at her own emotion inadequacy.

“Why did you ask me to meet you, Yousef?” she snaps at him, her words sharper they usually are around him. He doesn’t look surprised or scared, though, just hangs his head and rummages around in his pocket until he produces a small velvet-looking bag.

“My grandfather gave me this when I told him about you. He said that you were the only one he could imagine me giving it to. He’s crazy psychic like that.” He opens the little bag and turns it upside down so its contents fall into his hand.

“What is that?” she asks, as something like dread or fear or excitement pools in her stomach.

He continues his explanation as if he didn’t hear. “It wouldn’t fit you of course. My grandmother had the tiniest hands. My dad always said that they’d break if you held them for too long,” he chuckles, but the sound catches in his throat, more of a cough than a real laugh. He brings his hand closer to her and in the middle of his palm, impossibly tiny against the breadth of his hands, lies a small gold ring.

Sana sucks in a gasp with so much force that stars blink at the edge of her vision and before she can even exhale, Yousef starts chattering a mile a minute. “It doesn’t mean anything you’re thinking. Obviously, I don’t want to marry you. No wait, wait I do want to marry you but like, not now, because you have to go to college and be a doctor and I have to get a teaching degree and figure out all these things about Islam and it’s so hard Sana, I almost threw up the first time I went to the mosque because I was so sure that I wasn’t going to be welcome and that Allah would smite me or something because I wavered but none of that happened and that mosque in Turkey was so beautiful that I could only think about how much I would give to be married to you in a place like that because if there’s one thing I know for sure, Sana Bakkoush, it is that you make me believe.”

He gasps and inhales quickly but Sana beats him to it. “What does it mean then?”

“I…what?” The next part of whatever he was about to say dies in his throat as his eyes meet hers. There are tears in her eyes and she has her arms wrapped tightly around her torso as if to hold herself together, or hold herself away from him.

“You said it doesn’t mean that we would get married. So what does it mean?” Her shoulders shake as a shudder runs through her body and Yousef starts like he means to put his arms around her but the abrupt remembrance of who they are stops him in his tracks.

“It means…don’t forget about me in Germany. It means that I’ll call and I’ll text and I’ll FaceTime you and I’ll send you stupid memes on Facebook about badass doctors that show the world just how smart they are.” He isn’t breathing anymore.

“Yousef,” she sighs, and her voice wobbles with tears but it is still the most beautiful thing he has ever heard.

“It means that I’ll be waiting for you when you come home.”

And with that, she sobs and runs into his arms and it hurts when her chin knocks against his collarbone and her fists against the back of his head but his arms are the warmest comfort she’s ever known and there is not a thing in the world she is feeling right now except right.

_He’ll be waiting for me._

* * *

He leads her home that night with their hands still tangled in each other’s. The light outside her home is off; her parents are probably watching TV in their room and Elias is probably out. She unlocks the door and turns to find Yousef still grinning up at her, with his hands pushed deep into his pockets, shoulders up to his ears against the cold. The wind by the pier has thrown his hair in every direction. He looks like a little boy.  _Beautiful_.

She blows him a kiss. It is a juvenile thing and he rolls his eyes but catches it and pretends to place it carefully in his pocket without fail. He’s an idiot. She definitely loves him.

It’s a thought she had feared would terrify her. Finally realizing how much space he’s managed to take up in her heart. But instead of fear, she only feels light. Untethered. Like she was a balloon bobbing on a string in the wind and he’s the needle that has cut her free.

She doesn’t see Elias in the kitchen until he clears his throat. She yelps and he laughs at her, shouldering away her half-hearted attempts to cuff the back of his head. “I assume you’re in such a good mood because he finally gave you that ring, huh?” her big brother asks, and she’s certain her mouth flops open and closed like a fish because he imitates her, exaggerating the wide open eyes and sucked in cheeks. “What? He had to ask somebody before he proposed?” He hops off the kitchen counter and disappears into his room before Sana can stop him and returns before Sana truly registers that he’s even gone. How he does this is a mystery to her. But then again, are oxygen supply has been cut off multiple times tonight so this doesn’t bother her as much as it should.

“Did you tell Mom and Baba?” she whispers.

“Of course not! Who do you think I am?” He sounds vaguely offended. “Besides you aren’t running off to elope or anything like that so I don’t think they even need to know.”

Sana lets out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.

Elias simply chuckles at her and holds out his palm. “Consider this a going-away present. That tiny ring wouldn’t fit you anyways.” It is a silver chain, so delicate it looks as though it would be invisible against her neck. Elias doesn’t wait for her to thank him or even take it out of his hand, pulling her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her. “I’m so fucking happy for you, baby sister,” he whispers and for the second time that night, Sana cries into a boy’s shoulder.

* * *

And that night she dreams that she is floating away. She does not know where she is going but when she looks down he is there, her Yousef. He shields his eyes and smiles up at her and she feels a lightness burst through her body transforming her arms into wings. He had cut her strings and let her go but she knows where home is.

After all, he never asked her to stay. Only to come back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ya girl's back with another character study! Hit me up on tumblr @liamallmighty


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